


The Force Ghost Awakens

by fizzygingr



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 01:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5520287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fizzygingr/pseuds/fizzygingr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unapologetically sappy fix-it fic based on a dream I had the night after I saw TFA. Even my subconscious is in denial.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Force Ghost Awakens

Leia had known it the moment it happened. Oh, she’d had a feeling it was coming, a feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that she would never see him again, but that had done nothing to soften the blow. Nothing ever does, she knew. She’d lived long enough to have seen her share of pain and loss. (More than her share, she thought bitterly. She’d been a girl when she joined the war effort; and a girl when she saw her homeworld reduced to a cloud of ash; and she’d been fighting to avenge it ever since.) But the death of the man she loved at the hands of their own son; the grief of that was extraordinary.

She knew that he was one with the Force now, just as all the dead were. It was Luke who had told her that, many years ago. She’d known nothing then of the Force, of the power that pulsed through her. Hell, she’d barely known Luke then, either. But she’d trusted him even then; she had felt a connection with them; in a way, she’d already known.

Luke was gone too, now. Oh he was alive; they’d found the map, and she’d sent the girl, Rey, to bring him home. But she had no idea if he would agree to come back. And even if he did, she knew he wouldn’t be the same. None of them ever would be.

But Leia had felt something that morning, something wrong--no, something right with the Force. Something connected to Luke. It felt like hope, like joy, even; somewhere in a remote corner of the galaxy she had felt that her brother was starting to wake up.

And then the feeling had vanished, and one of her officers had come in with new intel, and she had returned to work. She didn’t have time to waste worrying about what it meant, she said. If she was going to be honest with herself, she didn’t want to get her hopes up.

But she felt it again, now; stronger this time, to the point that she couldn’t ignore it. Something bright, something warm, something for which she’d been longing. She looked up from the pile of paperwork on her desk. What she saw was shocking and at the same time entirely expected. 

Han stood before her, glowing. Quite literally, glowing. He looked, if not physically younger, then somehow more youthful and less weary. He looked right at her and smirked. “You miss me?”

“Took you long enough,” she replied. She stood up from her chair, but before she could walk around her desk, he had walked straight through it to meet her.

“Impressive,” she said, looking up into his eyes -- blue-tinged and transparent, but sparkling as always.

“Aren’t I?”

Rolling her eyes, Leia buried her face in his chest and let his arms envelop her. She could touch him still, but he felt somehow flimsy, in danger of evaporating into thin air at any moment. This only made her hold on all the more tightly, clutching his chest and letting tears fall gently onto the spectre of his jacket. They pooled together and slid to the ground, leaving not a mark behind. It was a dream, said a voice in the back of her head, and for a moment she pushed it away and sunk deeper into him. But she couldn’t hide forever. Steeling herself, she looked up, straight into his eyes, and said to him, “You’re not a Jedi. You can’t have done this.”

She expected him to vanish then and there. She expected to wake up and find that she’d dozed off at her desk. But Han only smiled wider, like a child with a secret he was bursting to tell.

“What,” he said, “do you think I did this to myself?”

It couldn’t be, she thought. And for a moment Leia didn’t dare to look. But when she turned towards the door, he was waiting for her: Luke, Luke whom she hadn’t seen in far too many years, Luke with sadness in his eyes but a smile on his face, Luke with open arms.

She walked straight through Han (how that was she neither knew nor cared), and into her brother’s embrace. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to him: It’s not your fault; You should have come to us; We should have gone to you. A thousand questions: Where did you go?; How did you bring him back?; How are you, really? Her mind jumped from one thought to the next as she felt the rough folds of his Jedi robes against her cheek. She wanted to say everything, but what came out was “Luke…”

Luke smiled at her, tears flowing freely down his face. Then, looking up at Han, he waved an arm and invited him into the embrace. For a moment the three of them stood there, together again after so many years. With Han’s eggshell arms on one side of her and Luke’s warm and solid arms on the other, Leia almost felt as if things could be right again, as if things could be as they should.

“How did you do it, Luke?” she asked after nearly a minute. “I thought a Jedi could only bring himself back?”

“It was that way,” Luke replied. “But I’ve been training, Leia; I’ve been exploring the force, discovering new ways to use it. And when I heard what had happened, I knew I had to…” he trailed off, looking at Han, or rather at Han’s boots. “I knew I had to fix it.”

Han lay a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “Nobody blames you, Luke. Anyway,” he smiled halfheartedly, “being dead ain’t so bad. Hell, I can even walk through walls now.”

Luke looked up into Han’s eyes. Transparent or not, he always could see right through him. “We’ll get him back,” he said. “We’ll get Ben back.”

“We will,” said Leia. And now, with the three of them together, holding onto each other as they always had, she truly believed it.


End file.
